It's Done!

Yep. It's official.

I. Finished. My. Novel.

Whaaaaattt???

After many trips back to the drawing board, I have come to a place where I'm just moving around commas. The characters aren't waking me up with more information anymore. New plot points aren't bursting into my shower. The book is...done.

It feels weird to say that.

Now, I know it isn't perfect. Only that at this point, I think I've taken it as far as I can go on my own.

It's a strange feeling. So many months of work. I feel sort of adrift. Like when I finish reading a really great book and experience a day or two of loss, missing that world, those people. (Am I the only one?)

A great big Now What hangs overhead.

I know the answer. But I feel cautious, protective. I'm the only person who has seen the whole thing. The next step, I know, is to get other eyeballs on it. Push it from the nest.

I wrote a novel.

Let's see if it's ready to fly.

Learning from the Masters

I've been feeling swamped.

Pounding away at my book-in-progress almost every day, I reached a point where it Just. Wasn't. Working.

A local editor gave a terrific presentation to my SCBWI chapter, offering a writer's intensive workshop and critiques. Her suggestions confirmed a lot of my suspicions about character and plot devices that weren't serving my book.

Super useful, but not as much fun as "Oh my god, this is a work of unfiltered genius!"

I got down to work, shifting to a first-person perspective and eliminating the problematic trope...and then began to flail. What the hell am I doing? How can I speak in this character's voice? What's going to drive the plot forward if not a tired, overused cliche?

I've also been rereading Harry Potter, which is like staring at the Sistine Chapel while completing a paint-by-number.

Google to the rescue.

I typed in How to Write a Novel and fell upon Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method. Its logical, analytical, spreadsheet (!) oriented technique for designing a novel really speaks to me. I like the fractal-based concept of a snowflake, building a novel one bit at a time until the complicated final picture seems beautifully impossible, complex, and inevitable.

Sure enough, as I'm going through the steps, I'm forced to confront basic things like character motivation and scene goals. I even like the ridiculously technical MRUs that he borrows from Dwight Swain. Now I am adding tools to my toolbox, going backwards a little bit but building from within--with a plan.

All the while reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Suddenly I realized that part of Rowling's genius (how did I not see this before?) was that she knew what was going to happen in book 7 way back in book 1.

Lightbulb moment!

via GIPHY

The reader doesn't know what's going to happen, but the writer does, and that's what brings that extra layer of resonance to the series, and to each individual book. Everything is tightly plotted, the characters are all carefully considered, and relationships are building toward the inevitable. A.Maze.Ing.

And so, back to the drawing board. Now I'm plotting out the wheres and whys of my entire series, including where it will end, which is already beginning to create interesting new complications in the book I'm writing now. If I understand the big picture, it's a lot easier to explain it to the reader--in pieces, of course. It seems so obvious now, but when I was up to my eyeballs in Chapter 6, it was easy to lose sight.

My hope is that these new inspirations will result in a layered, compelling read. I'm no Michelangelo (or Rowling), but I'm learning.

via GIPHY

Reading and rhyming

The RhyPiBoMo challenge continues!

I'm reading lots of rhyming picture books and enjoying the daily blog posts by authors, agents, and editors on Angie's site. I think I'm even rhyming in my sleep...

It's inspiring me to go back to a rhyming manuscript I set aside, as well as beginning to imagine a new one...of course the novel is still taking precedence. And the editing, reviewing, and posting about National Poetry Month! I'm not getting much time to breathe.

(Truth be told, my kids are watching wayy too much TV. Sigh.)

So here's a list of rhyming picture books I've been reading (with help from my 6-year-old)

By Day, By Night by Amy Gibson illus. Meilo So
Turntable Timmy by Michael Perry illus. Doug Cunningham
We All Went on Safari: A Counting Journey through Tanzania by Laurie Krebs illus. Julia Cairns
Oh Say Can You Say Di-no-saur? by Bonnie Worth illus. Steve Haefele
Dino-Basketball by Lisa Wheeler illus. Barry Gott
Come to the Castle by Linda Ashman illus. S.D. Schindler

More still to come!